AL 77 cont'd - We won't pay the troll!
We won't pay the troll! Enya handed me 5 good berries to keep for eventualities and sniffed at the air to check for danger. When she smelled nothing but fresh mountain air, we set out back on the river, traveling for about an hour in a westerly direction. The river began to wind south toward big hills with coniferous and deciduous trees. We saw no signs of civilization. The river was teeming with fish (still some piranhas that we avoided) so we collected some for sustenance - the non-piranha variety, of course. After a couple more hours, on the shore near a bend in the river up ahead, we saw signs of smoke - campfire size, not blazing forest fire. I sneaked up ahead to slowly move through the trees and got closer to the fire. I began to smell a foul smell of meat cooking. The fire was in front of a cave at the foot of a rocky hill. The spit on the fire seems like a smallish person, perhaps a dwarf. Moving closer I inadvertently kicked a metal helmet that ended up creating quite a ruckus. I had just enough time to note that the dwarf was not a dwarf I was familiar with before a loud growl of a large beast resounded from inside the cave. I quickly cast a sleep spell into the cave. A less ferocious voice than the owner of the growl exclaimed and was cut short but recognizing that it wasn't the voice that growled at me I started running south back to the river at full speed. My path along the river curved north before curving more west again. The folks on the raft slowed their pace just enough to figure out what was chasing me. About 45 feet behind me were two vaguely humanoid scary looking beasts with moss and mold growing on their skin and large warty noses. Varys cast sleep on the two, but their pursuit was unabated. I stopped, turned, and cast thunderwave at the now identified trolls. The magic pushed one away, but I was left slashing futilely at the other. Varys cast a chromatic orb in their direction. More fighting ensued. Everyone did a lot of damage, particularly the non-bards. Varys' fire kept the trolls from regenerating while Klotar and Enya dealt damage with their swords and arrows like never before. Even while we fought the sinking doom of our situation was unspoken in the air, and I hovered over the party in spirit, watching helplessly as a troll lifted my prone body overhead and pummelled Klotar with it. The portent of our situation only served to strengthen the instinct to survive, especially in Enya, without whom I would not be alive to tie shoelaces together a day more. We killed the two trolls and returned to the cave. Vaguely dwarven-sounding snoring noises emerged from a burlap sack toward the back... To be continued... |'Starring:' }} | and Featuring: }} | Locations Visited: }} Be sure to use the Source Editor to specify values for the template to auto-tag this adventure entry! Characters, NPCs and Locations all take comma-separated lists as their input.